No level sync, yes stats sync

I think the level synchronization system should be changed to make the game much more fun, I mean, if I'm already level 90 it's ok if I play low level content they adjust me to that level, but please don't adjust the skills anymore learned, it doesn't make sense to reach level 90 and play level 50 content without having the best abilities, I understand that the damage, resistance etc is reduced, but leave the abilities active, please.

This has been discussed before, and comes with 2 major flaws:
- If the abilities are there, but not scaled down, you would still trivialize any dungeon by having too much power. Lvl 90 abilities (or even lvl 50) are far too powerful for satasha.
- If the abilities are there, but scaled down, you have to input a lot more effort for the same outcome. Which makes the effort not worth it.

At best it could be part of the unrestricted party options next to ignoring lvl sync. But by default this is not going to work.

I understand what you're saying but something should be done, to encourage people to play roulette more so that it's more rewarding to play old content even though there isn't any prize, just wanting to play to have fun, since currently since points are obtained complete, I no longer find sense in making roulettes

Regardless something should be done. As it stands right now it's not fun in most cases.

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Originally Posted by UkcsAlias

- If the abilities are there, but scaled down, you have to input a lot more effort for the same outcome. Which makes the effort not worth it.

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This is literally how other games do it and it works fine. I would absolutely take this over spamming 1 over and over again. They either need to redesign level sync or they need to figure out how they want low levels to look like going forward. They can't keep removing skills and pushing them to the later levels. I get they want to avoid bloat, but low levels are so empty now compared to back in the ARR/HW days that it feels horrible to play anything sub 60.

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Originally Posted by Griphyt

I think the level synchronization system should be changed to make the game much more fun, I mean, if I'm already level 90 it's ok if I play low level content they adjust me to that level, but please don't adjust the skills anymore learned, it doesn't make sense to reach level 90 and play level 50 content without having the best abilities, I understand that the damage, resistance etc is reduced, but leave the abilities active, please.

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It absolutely makes sense, it trivialize content more than it already is. Level sync is a good thing

What stat does Benediction work off of, again? What about Hallowed Ground?

Stat/skill scaling does. not. work.

I could very likely hit the post character limit digging up every thread that has thoroughly demolished this proposal.

You have to begin every one of these suggestions with the understanding of what the devs are trying to accomplish with the current system. With level sync, as designed, devs have a simple, scalable, effective means to keep all players on relatively even balance.

Unless your idea can achieve that same outcome, it's dead in the water.

You flat out mathematically cannot balance a "stat synced" level 90 full-kit WHM with an equivalent on-level 15-20 WHM in beginner dungeons.

In conclusion, if you don't want to be synced, don't run synced content. If you want rewards from synced content, suck it up, because trying to make the content in any way easier or more palatable means reducing those exact rewards.

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Originally Posted by Griphyt

I understand what you're saying but something should be done, to encourage people to play roulette more so that it's more rewarding to play old content even though there isn't any prize, just wanting to play to have fun, since currently since points are obtained complete, I no longer find sense in making roulettes

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If you feel like there's no prize for doing roulettes, why do you want to do them? You could stick to level 90 content where you get to use your entire toolkit and get rewards relevant to level 90.

There are plenty of other players who are happy to do the roulettes so having a small part of the player base not interested in them is not a problem.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Regardless something should be done. As it stands right now it's not fun in most cases.

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Then don't do roulettes. Easy solution. There are plenty of other ways to get the same rewards that roulettes offer.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

This is literally how other games do it and it works fine.

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I disagree. It's a terrible experience because of the wacky scaling that results from trying to balance multiple levels of player power in the same content.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

You flat out mathematically cannot balance a "stat synced" level 90 full-kit WHM with an equivalent on-level 15-20 WHM in beginner dungeons.

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If someone just wants to be able to press the buttons because it makes them feel good to press the buttons and see the animation, there's a simple way to do it.

If the level the action/trait is learned is higher than the synced job level:

Trait enhancement does not apply (so abilities replaced as traits are acquired are available)
Potency = 0
Additional Mitigation = 0%
Effect of utility does not trigger

and so on. They can press the buttons and see the pretty animations as they want, it just has no effect on the outcome of the combat. After all, that's not the player's worry. They just want to use their level cap rotations and that's what they're getting to do.

It actually might make lower level dungeons more interesting because of all the wasted GCDs.

But it would also be wasted effort to make the change when players would give up on their level cap rotations and use the level appropriate abilities so they aren't wasting GCDs.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

I disagree. It's a terrible experience because of the wacky scaling that results from trying to balance multiple levels of player power in the same content.

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Its a better experience than having everything stripped away and spamming 1 for 20 minutes.

I mean, the answer is actually pretty simple. You don't scale down. You scale up. Every piece of content should be max expansion level (yes, making everything be "lvl 90 dungeon trash mob HP" or "lvl 90 dungeon boss HP" isn't difficult. I believe in our indie developer) and anyone below that just gets a percentage buff echo. Simple and elegant.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Its a better experience than having everything stripped away and spamming 1 for 20 minutes.

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That's your choice to enter into lower level content. If you don't like having your abilities stripped away, stick to level cap content. Problem solved.

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Originally Posted by Azuri

I mean, the answer is actually pretty simple. You don't scale down. You scale up. Every piece of content should be max expansion level (yes, making everything be "lvl 90 dungeon trash mob HP" or "lvl 90 dungeon boss HP" isn't difficult. I believe in our indie developer) and anyone below that just gets a percentage buff echo. Simple and elegant.

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I hope you realize that means getting new content even less often than we already do. They would have to rework every single dungeon every expansion for the new level cap.

It's much better to leave the system as is. If you don't want to be scaled down, don't do the low level content. Do level 90 content instead.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

That's your choice to enter into lower level content. If you don't like having your abilities stripped away, stick to level cap content. Problem solved.

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That mindset is why older content is getting trusts. Less and less people are playing lower level content because square refuses to fix the issues. Even now leveling an alt through the MSQ for the luls I've had nearly hour long queues in certain dungeons.

Low level content is boring for new and old players. They need to fix the core problem of there simply being too few skills at low levels. Either solve the progression of skills problem or make roulettes feel less of a chore and let us keep our skills. The status quo is not good for anyone right now.

I actually don't find old content boring nor that it takes too much time to get used to a lower set of abilities.

I also don't see how they would solve your issue, since they definitely can't go back and edit every dungeon every time there's any patch or expansion.

In fact, I think it would cause even more problems if this were even attempted. If the skills were all dumped at you at Lv 1 then it would be much harder for a new player to learn them. If the skills are different from a new player in any way, it would cause attrition, which is one of the things that they spend most time fighting against in the game.


Your reward for doing the roulettes are supposed to be the currency that you receive when doing the roulettes. If you think that is unsatisfactory or not enough to bring you back to do them, then that is a thing that you could ask them to tweak.



Maybe increase some of them or add extra ones like gemstones or allied/centurio seals. Heck, they could add a random currency and you would only find what you got at the end. For example, you do Main Scenario roulette and find out you got like 8000 MGP as a participation bonus, plus 250 Skybuilder's Scrips for being an adventurer in need.

That would spice things up, huh? :P

SWTOR scales their content every expansion. It can't be that complicated if that ghost of a development team can do it. As for currency. Meh, not worth it. Hunts are faster. Only reason to do some of the roulettes is for EXP and even then its not really worth it most of the time. So ya, the rewards from roulettes are meh.

Also, no one is saying all skills should be dumped on you at level 1... That's dumb. They have in fact however been taking skills away over the years and moving them to later levels to keep ability bloat down. Pre-level 30 content wasn't always just a single button for most classes/jobs back in the day. All I'm saying in that regard is if they don't want to do scaling and let us keep our skills then they need to work on redesigning progression through the older levels. Start introducing abilities earlier so the jobs feel more alive instead of feeling like empty shells even at level 60 and introduce traits that upgrade them to the higher level version later.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

SWTOR scales their content every expansion. It can't be that complicated if that ghost of a development team can do it. As for currency. Meh, not worth it. Hunts are faster. Only reason to do some of the roulettes is for EXP and even then its not really worth it most of the time. So ya, the rewards from roulettes are meh.

Also, no one is saying all skills should be dumped on you at level 1... That's dumb. They have in fact however been taking skills away over the years and moving them to later levels to keep ability bloat down. Pre-level 30 content wasn't always just a single button for most classes/jobs back in the day. All I'm saying in that regard is if they don't want to do scaling and let us keep our skills then they need to work on redesigning progression through the older levels. Start introducing abilities earlier so the jobs feel more alive instead of feeling like empty shells even at level 60 and introduce traits that upgrade them to the higher level version later.

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Then what's supposed to make leveling the jobs feel meaningful at higher levels if most abilities are frontloaded in the first 50 levels and you get almost nothing but traits after that? Passive increases like those the traits usually give generally aren't felt.

I think the issue on the new player side is more from the pacing of the MSQ at low level compared to how rapidly classes/jobs will level unless there is no access to any sort of XP bonus. If the MSQ moved as fast as classes/jobs get leveled, no one would think twice.

The solution to that might be coming with 7.0 considering YoshiP wants to create a new entry point to the MSQ for new players. But we'll have to wait until the FanFest to find out if it's happening next expansion, and how they're addressing it if so.

Regardless, I'm still not going support changing from level sync to power scaling in lower level content. I've been the power scaling route in other games and it was never been a good experience for me, nor had it been a good experience for the new players based on their comments after I got to the other end of the power scale.

How many games continued to have positive active growth in their players base after using power scaling, and how many saw their player base slowly die out? That's not an attempt to say that the power scaling itself was the direct cause of a game's decline but rather that it did not fix the issue that was at the root of player dissatisfaction, nor did it counter that issue by creating a better experience in other ways.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Then what's supposed to make leveling the jobs feel meaningful at higher levels if most abilities are frontloaded in the first 50 levels and you get almost nothing but traits after that? Passive increases like those the traits usually give generally aren't felt.

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The same thing that should make leveling through lower levels feel meaningful... There are so many skills they could introduce earlier and still have enough left over to continue to introduce at later levels including traits that upgrade those skills to new animations/procs/potency.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

The same thing that should make leveling through lower levels feel meaningful... There are so many skills they could introduce earlier and still have enough left over to continue to introduce at later levels including traits that upgrade those skills to new animations/procs/potency.

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You're talking about 100 levels that those have to be spread out over. A lot of jobs max out around 24-26 abilities (not counting role actions) that will be set up on hotbars at a given time. if 10 of those are getting learned in level 1-15 and another 10 in levels 16-50, that doesn't leave much to learn over the next 85 levels. Traits don't cut it as being interesting things to learn when all they do is passively enhance a skill we're already using so it just has a flashier animation and slightly increased potency.

That could be a good discussion by itself, but it's really getting off topic for this thread and I don't want to totally derail it.

I think the core of the problem is players expecting action game play in a story driven RPG. Action games will dump you into the big skills almost right away. RPGs have skills slowly build up over time, just as they would in real life. With level sync in dungeons, we're re-experiencing what things were like when we were first starting out and that gives us a greater appreciation for how much our characters have learned since.

There's plenty of content to do if someone wants to be using their max level toolkit whether that's doing max level content or doing lower level content unsynced. The options are there. Switching to a power scaling system would take away that option to re-experience what things were like when we were first starting out.

There are still plenty of players happy to do the roulettes even with level sync. Someone at max level who dislikes level sync doesn't need to think that the poor sprouts are being ignored. Duty Support doesn't exist because fewer players are doing roulettes. Duty Support exists to give options to someone who prefers playing solo or would prefer to learn mechanics before jumping into a group of random strangers, which all too often are harshly judgmental of new players in other MMOs so new players fear the same experience here.

A level 80 rotation (not even level 90 yet) is on average 3 times as potent as a level 50 rotation, not even accounting for a difference in stats. All those extra skills and traits with their increased potencies stack up quick.

So what would happen when you can do a low level dungeon three times as fast depending on the level of the players you queue in with? Would you prefer to run through Sastasha in 15 minutes, or 5 minutes?
All of a sudden, it becomes disproportionately favourable to want to kick out those newbies and pull in someone who's level 90 doesn't it...

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Originally Posted by Ransu

That mindset is why older content is getting trusts. Less and less people are playing lower level content because square refuses to fix the issues. Even now leveling an alt through the MSQ for the luls I've had nearly hour long queues in certain dungeons.

Low level content is boring for new and old players. They need to fix the core problem of there simply being too few skills at low levels. Either solve the progression of skills problem or make roulettes feel less of a chore and let us keep our skills. The status quo is not good for anyone right now.

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I've never had any problem getting into lower level content via the roulettes...

Speak for yourself. I have no problem scaling down to a level 50 rotation.

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Originally Posted by Griphyt

I think the level synchronization system should be changed to make the game much more fun, I mean, if I'm already level 90 it's ok if I play low level content they adjust me to that level, but please don't adjust the skills anymore learned, it doesn't make sense to reach level 90 and play level 50 content without having the best abilities, I understand that the damage, resistance etc is reduced, but leave the abilities active, please.

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It makes perfect sense if you are level synced to 10 to only have level 10 abilities.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

SWTOR scales their content every expansion. It can't be that complicated if that ghost of a development team can do it. As for currency. Meh, not worth it. Hunts are faster. Only reason to do some of the roulettes is for EXP and even then its not really worth it most of the time. So ya, the rewards from roulettes are meh.

Also, no one is saying all skills should be dumped on you at level 1... That's dumb. They have in fact however been taking skills away over the years and moving them to later levels to keep ability bloat down. Pre-level 30 content wasn't always just a single button for most classes/jobs back in the day. All I'm saying in that regard is if they don't want to do scaling and let us keep our skills then they need to work on redesigning progression through the older levels. Start introducing abilities earlier so the jobs feel more alive instead of feeling like empty shells even at level 60 and introduce traits that upgrade them to the higher level version later.

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SWTOR level scaling sucks. When a death field kills 5 mobs because you are max level scaled to 10 is insane. And that was implemented a while ago. The "ghost team" just revamped it to make comps effective. And the main skills don't scale anymore. I play SWToR and its crazy doing a lower planet and having max level skills. Takes all the fun out of the game....IMHO.

That's why I like the scaling in FF14. You can't just overpower everything.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

Its a better experience than having everything stripped away and spamming 1 for 20 minutes.

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20 min? You doing lowbie stuff wrong, at most the should take 15 min and that is pretty slow.

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Originally Posted by Upirlikhyi

SWTOR level scaling sucks. When a death field kills 5 mobs because you are max level scaled to 10 is insane. And that was implemented a while ago. The "ghost team" just revamped it to make comps effective. And the main skills don't scale anymore. I play SWToR and its crazy doing a lower planet and having max level skills. Takes all the fun out of the game....IMHO.

That's why I like the scaling in FF14. You can't just overpower everything.

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Swtor scaling is fantastic. Don't know what you're on about.

I'd like to point out that this isn't just an issue with level sync. I almost quit the game during ARR, not due to relatively predictably story, but because combat felt so empty. The only thing that kept me going was FC members insisting it got better later, and then discovering Red Mage at 50, which actually had a fairly complete kit, insofar as it had all of the pieces already there that worked together. Ya, you get more added to it later, but the core mechanical concept (dual-cast, balanced mana, melee combo) was there from square 1.

So many jobs in FFXIV aren't that way (even some newer ones). Summoner has their core CD->gem summons kit by level 22, but Reaper lacks theirs it until 70 (Gibbet and Gallows) or even 80 (Enshroud and the Shroud Gauge). Paladin used to have this issue, since they didn't get their "spell phase" until 68, but the revamp means they have at least a somewhat smoother transition now, though they still lack their spellcasts until 64. Sages have their core mechanics (specifically, Eukrasia and Kardia) by 30, and their Addersgall mechanic at 45, and thus play at lower levels basically as they do at max, just with fewer oGCDs and cooldowns. Meanwhile, Dragoons don't get the core defining traits of their rotation (their 5-part melee combo and Life of the Dragon) until levels 64 and 70, respectively. Bards are literally lacking an entire third of their song rotation until level 52 (so, including the infamous Crystal Tower roulette). Machinists have their heat mechanic when they start at 30, but entirely lack a proper use for it until Heat Blast at level 35 (which really put me off the job at first, incidentally. They should really start with that. And probably get both Heat Blast and Hypercharge at a much lower level, since it's literally their central mechanic.). Ninjas in level 50 content are a metric pain due to lacking Armor Crush. And of course, Black Mages are notorious for being almost intolerable to play under like 80, and for their gameplay completely reinventing itself every 8-10 levels. And that's not even touching on the fact that several jobs (Ninja, Dragoon, healers) don't get their spammable AoEs until nearly 50.

Anyway, my point is that it's very scattered. Some jobs play just fine at lower levels, while others are absolutely atrocious. And this doesn't affect just level syncing, it also influences whether new players to the game are likely to stick around for it. If the first 40-50 levels, much less 80, of your job are insanely boring and unfun because you only have 25-50% of your literal core mechanical kit (looking at you Black Mage, Dragoon, and Reaper), it's much more likely for players to just go "eh, I'mma go play something fun" and entirely miss out on the later parts of the game where both the combat mechanics and the story get wildly better.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

Then don't do roulettes. Easy solution. There are plenty of other ways to get the same rewards that roulettes offer.

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Or how about SE makes dungeons more engaging? I'm not there for the rewards in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

Or how about SE makes dungeons more engaging? I'm not there for the rewards in the first place.

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So start a thread on how to make dungeons more engaging. That's a different topic from this one.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

So start a thread on how to make dungeons more engaging. That's a different topic from this one.

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It relates to the topic and you're not the arbiter of the forums.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

It relates to the topic and you're not the arbiter of the forums.

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Not hard to use the "it relates to the topic" argument for just about anything that would involve a dungeon.

There's a lot more to dungeon engagement than how many buttons players get to push. If all players needed to be engaged was push lots of buttons Stone, Sky, Sea would be an exceptionally busy place.

My suggestion was meant to help you get attention and discussion from those who are likewise dissatisfied with engagement in dungeons rather than have your comment buried in someone else's thread about a very narrow subset of factors that can affect engagement. But I guess you don't want a discussion of that after all. My bad.

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Originally Posted by Kaedys

I'd like to point out that this isn't just an issue with level sync. I almost quit the game during ARR, not due to relatively predictably story, but because combat felt so empty. The only thing that kept me going was FC members insisting it got better later, and then discovering Red Mage at 50, which actually had a fairly complete kit, insofar as it had all of the pieces already there that worked together. Ya, you get more added to it later, but the core mechanical concept (dual-cast, balanced mana, melee combo) was there from square 1.

So many jobs in FFXIV aren't that way (even some newer ones). Summoner has their core CD->gem summons kit by level 22, but Reaper lacks theirs it until 70 (Gibbet and Gallows) or even 80 (Enshroud and the Shroud Gauge). Paladin used to have this issue, since they didn't get their "spell phase" until 68, but the revamp means they have at least a somewhat smoother transition now, though they still lack their spellcasts until 64. Sages have their core mechanics (specifically, Eukrasia and Kardia) by 30, and their Addersgall mechanic at 45, and thus play at lower levels basically as they do at max, just with fewer oGCDs and cooldowns. Meanwhile, Dragoons don't get the core defining traits of their rotation (their 5-part melee combo and Life of the Dragon) until levels 64 and 70, respectively. Bards are literally lacking an entire third of their song rotation until level 52 (so, including the infamous Crystal Tower roulette). Machinists have their heat mechanic when they start at 30, but entirely lack a proper use for it until Heat Blast at level 35 (which really put me off the job at first, incidentally. They should really start with that. And probably get both Heat Blast and Hypercharge at a much lower level, since it's literally their central mechanic.). Ninjas in level 50 content are a metric pain due to lacking Armor Crush. And of course, Black Mages are notorious for being almost intolerable to play under like 80, and for their gameplay completely reinventing itself every 8-10 levels. And that's not even touching on the fact that several jobs (Ninja, Dragoon, healers) don't get their spammable AoEs until nearly 50.

Anyway, my point is that it's very scattered. Some jobs play just fine at lower levels, while others are absolutely atrocious. And this doesn't affect just level syncing, it also influences whether new players to the game are likely to stick around for it. If the first 40-50 levels, much less 80, of your job are insanely boring and unfun because you only have 25-50% of your literal core mechanical kit (looking at you Black Mage, Dragoon, and Reaper), it's much more likely for players to just go "eh, I'mma go play something fun" and entirely miss out on the later parts of the game where both the combat mechanics and the story get wildly better.

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This pretty much nails what I've been saying. Low level kits feel emptier and emptier with each expansion because they keep removing old stuff for new skills at later levels making low level kits feel more incomplete. Granted in ARR/HW the skills still trickled in and you didn't really feel any nuance till unlocking your job at 30, but the cross class system filled in the gaps back then. That said, I'm not advocating bringing cross class stuff back, but progression of skills needs to be revamped for 1-50 stuff.

i feel like all skills should be unlockable at lv 70, so that when doing low level duty with enough kits, it will make it a bit more fun. lv 71-90 will be just a traits

but there's so much you have to look into like

1. stat
2. potency
3. button bloats
4. lore (job quest)
5. duty support
6. numbers (damage, hp, etc), talking about when they're lowering the numbers in EW for lv 51-90. they have to do it again for lv 1-50